Thanks to a tip from “Jim C,” a reader of Big Government, Rosanne’s interview from earlier this year at the Huffington Post reveals that it’s pretty common knowledge within the power structure of ACORN that they did, indeed, work to get President Obama elected:

But, the most impressive thing is that they elected Barack H. Obama through their fantastic organizing skills and knowledge.

I wonder how all of that organizing skill and knowledge to help elect President Obama coincides with ACORN’s use of Federal Funds and their status as a 501(c)3 non-profit.

While I’m sure that is an issue  a REAL journalist will take up immediately, in the mean time, we’ll just keep using our pretend journalistic skills to find insignificant things like ACORN activists who boast about working on behalf a presidential candidate and also serve as Precinct Inspectors for the County of Los Angeles.

Howie Kurtz:  Are you listening?

Bonus! Here is a video of Roseanne confirming her ACORN ties at a rally earlier this year in Watts, CA.  Bask in the depth of her thoughts.   Transcript follows:

Roseanne transcript –

So, the robocalls were a mea culpa and promise that ACORN would do better in the future? Hardly. Away from the kleig lights of the national press, ACORN continued to deny wrongdoings and deflect attention to “extremists” attacking her. On the calls, ACORN even reiterates the lie that James O’Keefe and Hannah Giles were turned away in Los Angeles.

Listen for yourself (in English and Spanish):

Transcript and more after the jump.

~~

ENGLISH TRANSCRIPT:
Hello.  This is ACORN.  We’re calling to let you know that ACORN has continued to fight hard against foreclosures, for affordable healthcare, and now, to beat back the extremist attacks against our members, an organization you have seen on the news this week.  Los Angeles ACORN successfully turned away the two right-wing activists who secretly videotaped a handful of ACORN employees and stopped their attempts to discredit the good will of ACORN here in Los Angeles.  Thank you for your continued support.  Always remember that the people united will never be defeated.  Should you have any questions or would like to find out how you can be more involved, please call the L.A. office at 213 747 4211 extension 215.  Thank you and have a good evening.

SPANISH TRANSLATION:
“Hi, we are calling to inform you that ACORN continues working against the embargo of mortgages and for healthcare reform, and now to fight the attacks of the conservative press like Fox News.  In LA the Fox News activists attempted to infiltrate our office but we (removed them w/o incident)”{I believe this is what was said}. “Thank you for your support and as always ‘A united people will never be overcome.’

~~

The Spanish language part of the robocall explicitly mentions Fox News as the originators of the undercover video sting. The English language part simply mentions “an organization.” ACORN can’t even keep their story straight in different languages. ACORN needs a Chief Organizer of its evolving story lines.

The robocall confirms what we have always expected: ACORN’s commitment to an “internal review” is a scam meant to deflect attention from its many problems. Even before ACORN has publicly released the results of its “review,” they have already sued to have their federal funding reinstated. The robocall and federal suit reveal how ACORN acts when it thinks no one is paying attention.

In the light of day, ACORN’s spin machine jockeys to get just enough favorable media coverage to survive any particular story or news cycle. It will distort and lie, confident that Big Media will never follow-up nor hold the organization accountable for its past statement. The Ombudsman of the New York Times even had to admit that one of the paper’s reporters had, on his own initiative, edited one of Bertha Lewis’ statements to cover-up the fact that she had lied. After videos of ACORN Baltimore and DC were released, Lewis put out a statement claiming that James and Hannah were thrown out of ACORN’s New York office, among other locations. After a video of ACORN New York was released however, the Times reporter edited New York out of any further references to Lewis’ statement.

We’ve stopped waiting for the Columbia Review of Journalism or any other “keepers of journalism’s flame” to weigh in on that episode.

ACORN’s only hope to survive is to deflect public attention long enough that the videos, and the deep corruption they exposed, recede in memory. If Big Media continues to willfully ignore ACORN and its corruption, nevermind actually aid and abet their spin, ACORN may very well get away with it.

For his leadership, superior ethics, unwavering integrity, compassion for young women, and for serving as a shining beacon of inspiration for his fellow ACORN employees, I am honored to present Felix Harris, program director at ACORN Housing, with the humble award of ACORN EMPLOYEE OF THE YEAR.

~~~

Follow the rest of the LA Story:

ACORN: The LA Story, Part I

ACORN–The LA Story, Part II: ‘We knew we were gonna put in Obama.’

The mainstream media were complicit in their coverage of the ACORN scandal. Their behavior was and continues to be an insult to democracy and journalistic responsibility as the Fourth Estate has ignored facts, engaged in one-sided sourcing, and avoided basic and inherently important journalistic questioning.

First, there was avoidance. Some media outlets simply ignored the story. On Sept. 15, five days after the Maryland tape was released, ABC’s Charlie Gibson said, “I don’t even know about it… so you’ve got me at a loss” and said that the story might be “just one you leave to the cables.” But, Gibson was not alone in his lack of knowledge. The New York Times did not cover the story for nearly a week. On Sept. 26, Clark Hoyt, The Times’ Public Editor, acknowledged the paper’s tardiness, but insinuated that the story was lacking in facts:

But for days, as more videos were posted and government authorities rushed to distance themselves from Acorn, The Times stood still.  Some stories, lacking facts, never catch fire…But others do, and a newspaper like The Times needs to be alert to them or wind up looking clueless or, worse, partisan itself.

Then, there were cases of gratuitously sloppy journalism.  Some of the outlets that did cover the story simply skipped over basic interview questions. In several instances, Bertha Lewis made the false claim that the filmmakers were turned away in “dozens of cities.” In a CNN interview with Rick Sanchez, Lewis said, “…the filmmakers went to dozens of offices. They were turned away.” In a more flagrant example of corroborating untruths, Lewis reiterated her “dozens” on MSNBC, stating, “…They were thrown out of dozens of offices. And, in fact, in Philadelphia, we called the police, filed a police report.”

Similarly, Wolf Blitzer, failed to adequately question Lewis. While on his show, Lewis made the following statement: “This sort of notorious crew went around to dozens of our offices. What you don’t see are the offices that threw them out… offices that filed police complaints.”

The lack of depth of these interviews with Lewis has been egregious. Upon hearing of the “dozens,” even the most unseasoned journalist would know to ask, “What were the cities where filmmakers were thrown out?” And, what about the police reports (plural) that were filed by multiple “offices”? Like Sanchez’s treatment of the “dozens,” Blitzer failed to ask for a list of cities that took such action. Lewis was granted a free pass, as no probing questions were asked about the issues in question.

On Sept. 12, just two days after the Maryland tape was made public, Lewis released a statement on ACORN’s Web site, writing, “This recent scam, which was attempted in San Diego, Los Angeles, Miami, New York, Philadelphia to name a few places, had failed for months before the results we’ve all recently seen.”

Following subsequent video releases, New York and San Diego were dropped from ACORN’s list of cities where the filmmakers were allegedly “turned away” and the aforementioned statement was removed from ACORN’s Web site, thus erasing evidence of inconsistency.  Big Government copied her statement and posted it in it’s entirety at the time of it’s release (notice the broken link to the ACORN website in the Big Government post). This change can also be viewed in a story published on Sept. 17 by The Washington Post. According to the Post, “An ACORN spokesman said they were turned away in Miami, Los Angeles and Philadelphia, where workers called police and filed a report.”  Notice the missing cities.

Where were the media to catch this glaring glitch in ACORN’s own reporting? The answer: Nowhere to be found. And, it was on the same day (Sept. 17), that Lewis appeared on MSNBC to discuss the fact that “dozens” of cities turned the filmmakers away.

And who could forget the glaring corrections that were issued by The Associated Press and The Washington Post. Both the AP and the Post published stories that attributed an incorrect, racially-driven motive for O’Keefe’s decision to conduct the ACORN investigation . Fortunately, the outlets were forced to correct their journalistic faux pas. Here is the Post’s correction:

A Sept. 18 Page One article about the community organizing group ACORN incorrectly said that a conservative journalist targeted the organization for hidden-camera videos partly because its voter-registration drives bring Latinos and African Americans to the polls. Although ACORN registers people mostly from those groups, the maker of the videos, James E. O’Keefe, did not specifically mention them.

Despite the fact that Bertha Lewis’ credibility had been completely compromised on September 14th with with the release of the New York ACORN investigation (not to mention the San Diego videos released on Sept. 17), she was granted a forum with The National Press Club on Oct. 6; the conference was broadcast on C-SPAN. In that presser, Lewis used the debunked information from the Associated Press and Washington Post articles that had since been corrected. Yes, the NPC gave her a platform to continue touting untruths that were previously purveyed by the supine media. She said, “O’Keefe, himself, told The Washington Post, ‘They’re registering too many minorities. They usually vote Democratic. Somebody’s got to stop them’…”

Perhaps the most perplexing media coverage – or lack thereof – surrounds a video that ACORN Housing’s Philadelphia office released back in September. On Sept. 16, a YouTube account was created and on Sept. 17, a video featuring Philadelphia Office Director Katherine Conway Russell was released. The video, which is intended to respond to O’Keefe and Giles while defending the Philadelphia office’s handling of the filmmakers went largely unnoticed by the mainstream media.

In the video, Russell describes a July meeting with O’Keefe and Giles and uses a police report filed after the filmmakers left the office as evidence that the Philadelphia office was taken aback by the prostitution story line. Aside from the fact that the series of events that lead up to the police filing described in the video lead to more questions, the police report itself does not mention anything about discussion content; the report merely claims that O’Keefe was responsible for a verbal “disturbance.”

While the media vastly ignored this important video, many outlets did delve into the police report. According to The Washington Post, “ACORN emailed a copy of a Philadelphia police report dated July 24 to The Post to verify its account that police were called and the couple was shown the door.” And concerning the Philadelphia office’s involvement, WPVI Philadelphia wrote, “…by every account, the Philadelphia office is not part of the problem.” And, WBUR-FM wrote, “…in ACORN Housing’s North Philadelphia office, the scene is far from the one seen in the videos, which were made by a conservative activist”

Here, the media takes sides without interviewing or speaking with O’Keefe and Giles. Aside from the issue of ignoring ACORN’s own video, such selective sourcing is disturbing. Nowhere in the police report is ACORN’s rejection of any subject matter mentioned, therefore the report, in itself, does not prove wholeheartedly what ACORN’s officials in that city have said.

And finally: The insinuation that the videos were creatively edited was repeated in a plethora of mainstream news media. In an opinion piece for True/Slant, Allison Kilkenny wrote,

The videos are edited very creatively — if I’m being generous — to show only the ACORN employees who engaged in shady behavior, and not the dozens of other ACORN offices from which O’Keefe and Company were ejected, and in a few cases, ACORN employees called the police on the duo.

Aside from the fact that the videos weren’t edited in any way to deceive the viewers, that dozens of offices did not dispel O’Keefe and Giles, and only one office has come forward with a report, entire audio and transcript versions of the investigations are available on BigGovernment.com, right at the top of the homepage. This falsehood (that full versions are not available) has been repeated by Lewis herself on CNN and in other mainstream outlets (and, surprise, virtually no journalist has corrected her).

The ACORN story has, once again, shown the media’s inability to fulfill its duties. The media should adequately inform the public while asking the questions needed to provide a full and robust picture of what is occurring. ACORN coverage has been biased, incomplete, and sloppily mishandled. Let’s hope the aforementioned examples help to set the record straight.